“Clear is kind,” says Brené Brown. I encountered this quotation in the context of advice about workplace leadership, but it is a touchstone idea for so many other registers of difficult communication, including aspects of teaching. Do you find it hard to make comments on disappointing student work? Do you have reservations about writing that […]
The “Goldilocks” Workload
How much is too much work for undergrads? Most of us teaching in the Humanities are not trying to “weed out” students, or create standards, assessments, and hierarchies that function as sorting hats to allocate students to majors, course streams, or careers. Either we’re teaching (mostly large) GE classes or more targeted courses for majors. […]
Provocations for the May meeting
What are the reading bottlenecks we observe in our classes? In our April meetings, we honed in on specific, skill-oriented obstacles to students using reading as we expect them to in other assignments. It’s not just a question of are students doing the reading?—but rather are they doing something productive with the act of reading? […]